Eudaimonia

Deciding from our air-conditioned offices

2009-11-16T00:24:00.006-02:00

This Saturday, I had the pleasure to take part at TEDxSP, an independently organised TED event. From 07h30 to 20h00, more than 30 people passed their message to a super qualified 700 people audience.

Right in the beginning, journalist Denis Burgierman sad something somehow obvious, but that touched me importantly. He said: “We have the bad habit of solving problems in an air-conditioned room and imposing the solution to others. The problems are not theoretical, they are on the streets. And they can only be successfully addressed if the people affected by them are involved.”

The point of Denis’ lecture was that Brazil is rich in many things, especially in problems. As weird as it sounds at first, for him the abundant interesting problems is one of our biggest assets, because they channel creative people’s passion and efforts, generating a very attractive and flourishing environment. Therefore, specific problems are solved, more people engage in solving more complex problems and we can form a bank of creative solutions adapted to our times, which can be replicated in other places.

When working for big organisations, we often feel contributing for building large scale solutions to important issues, such as poverty, shortage of opportunities, low quality education and, in my case, pathways for bringing sustainability into the management of different organisation. However, commonly we do such from our acclimatised offices, based on cold data and on what we think we know about the problem.

Well, turns out it could be better to be “less efficient”, do less stuff, so we can free our agendas to interact with the ones directly involved in the situation. This way, we can build stronger solutions, help forming a community in the process and individually learn.

I am certain we become better people in the proportion we learn to respect other points of views and stories. And we can only learn that lesson by wholeheartedly engaging with others.

So, why is it we don’t do it?

Birds on the Wires

2009-11-15T23:26:00.003-02:00

Inspired on a picture of Birds on the Wires, the Brazilian musician Jarbas Agnelli translated their position onto a melody which crossed the world and made him famous.

Sensitive and beautiful!

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

The fun theory

2009-10-29T22:17:00.002-02:00

What can change our behaviour for better? FUN can!!!

The impact of giant companies

2009-10-22T00:22:00.004-02:00

Everybody knows giant companies cause a lot of impact: environmental damages where they produce goods, greenhouse gas emissions while transporting these goods, cultural interferences as they advertise and social issues all along the chain.

German RWE energy company sensitively created a video to question: what if giant companies caused a lot of... POSITIVE impact?

See you in Rio in 2016!!!

2009-10-03T15:48:00.002-03:00

Today, all Brazilians are proud and content. In 2016, we'll have the opportunity to host the world's most beautiful peace and limits overcoming gathering: the Olympic Games. We'll put all our hospitality, rhythm and joy available so that the athletes and visitors can prove the Brazilian spirit, enjoy themselves to the fullest and take a bit of the experience to their lives back home.

As citizens, we also intend to make this wonderful opportunity bring results for the population after the games, through the infrastructure built, partnerships created and cultural exchanges started.

The world will come together as never before, because passion unites us!

Holidays notice :-)

2009-09-21T21:43:00.002-03:00

For all friends calling and writing for my birthday, thanks a lot for the good energy sent!

At the moment, I'm traveling through South America, so had a very different birthday, without any friends and family around, but with lots of beautiful sights, nature, sports and good trekking mates from different countries to celebrate with.

Anyhow, celebrations aren't over. I'll call a party as soon as I'm back and will be super happy to receive belated wishes and calls.

Carpe diem!

Feeling foreign

2009-08-26T21:45:00.002-03:00

When I came back from Australia to Brazil after just 16 months overseas, various people asked: Why?

The easy answer was “I intend to build my life close to my family and close friends”. Although that is partly true, there was another feeling I could never express clearly, a sensation that I would never totally understand the context and fit in another culture.

Today, as part of my preparation for a 3-week backpacking trip through Chile, Bolivia and Peru, I was reading Isabel Allende’s “My invented country”. She is Chilean but has been living in the US for many years now. At some point, I found the description I could never articulate as well:

“I understand the language, but I lack the keys. When we meet our friends, I can’t really participate of the conversations, because I don’t know much about what had happened and about the people they are referring to, I had not watched the same movies when I was young, had not danced to Elvis’ epileptic guitar, had not smoked marihuana nor had I protested against the Vietnam war. How can I not be a foreigner if I don’t feel any fascination for Clinton’s sexual scandal? […] Baseball is another mystery for me; I can’t understand so much passion towards a group of fat people expecting a ball that never comes.”

Sustainability in the president's agenda?

2009-08-23T23:04:00.004-03:00

"It is quite easy to understand why the possibility of senator and ex-minister for the environment Marina Silva running for President of Brazil, in next year’s elections, can cause such excitement but also so much concern. Millions of Brazilians, sensitive to the ecological cause, to environmental and social sustainability, to climate change and our planet’s destiny, to the devastation of our ecosystems and the quality of life in our cities, yearn for a voice and a chance in the presidential campaign, so far limited to candidates promoting and proposing the classic 1960’s unsustainable model of economic growth. One can also understand the anguish of perplexed politicians asking themselves: is this Marina thing good for me? Bad for me?"

From Green Party leader Sirkis

I completely agree this last week has been very very interesting. The perspective of having a female presidential candidate who embodies ethics, grew up in the middle of the Amazon forest, comprehends some of Brazil's deepest social issues and seriously envisions the country walking on a sustainability path has moved so many smart people that it really seems we can dream with a future in which:
- we put people first
- we think about our grandchildren when taking important decisions
- we value what is typically Brazilian
- we help building the country we all want as participatory citizens
- we have the government as a role model

Impossible?

Writing in O Globo newspaper, columnist Zuenir Ventura said Marina could bring a touch of Barack Obama to the Brazilian elections. "Marina excites young people, those who are disenchanted with the current situation [and] with the Workers' Party … in such a way that she could create a spontaneous and contagious movement within society … as innovative as that which occurred in the US with Obama."

For more, check the article on the UK Guardian

The power of organised individuals

2009-08-20T18:42:00.005-03:00

What can a person do to change businesses? Carrotmob brings one alternative. Check it out!

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Love is important, damn it!

2009-07-31T00:25:00.003-03:00

A few months ago, a lonely graffitter wrote on a wall in Sao Paulo: Love is important, damn it!

It turned out it became a viral urban intervention movement. Various artists and citizens joined the idea and we could see the love burst everywhere in the city.

When photographer Fábio Candeias tried to register the collective feeling, though, he captured a lot more.

Picture taken at Consolação Avenue.
Source: InternetCidade

Getting unstuck

2009-07-21T20:20:00.004-03:00

This lecture by MIT professor Rebecca Henderson is one of the coolest on organisational behaviour and performance management I've seen. Enjoy it!

Vik Muniz

2009-07-19T22:02:00.005-03:00

The brain doesn't pluck its ideas from the flowerbed of idleness. It is above all through the interactions with materials, through work, through effort and ultimately through failure that we nourish our source of ideas.

This statement by internationally renowned Brazilian artist Vik Muniz talks a lot about his work. He gets inspiration in other artists' work, uses all kinds of materials (from plastic toys to computers passing through pasta and chocolate syrup) and invite the spectator to reflect with him about the very concept of reality, as well as fame, happiness and the essence of things.

One of the most sensitive of his pieces, in my opinion, is the Sugar Children. After spending time in a sugar plantation in the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, Vik realised how sweet the children were and how narrow their future tended to be. So he used a black base and made the children’s portraits with sugar, the very object that represented at the same time sweetness and oppression.

Wanna know more? Check Vik on TED.

My posts in other (more visited) sites

2009-07-18T14:57:00.002-03:00

As the importance of the internet increases for bridging sons and parents, consumers and organisations, research and the public, I’ve naturally started to contribute to other sites and blogs – especially because the number of visitors of those sites are often many times bigger :-)

Two of my favourite follow (unfortunately only in Portuguese).

Peter Senge and social well being: published in my post grad class blog, talks about the amazing experience of bringing Peter Senge to Brazil, leading the working team according to self mastery and shared leadership principles, and hearing what he has to say about the direction we should take as a global society.

If you want to watch the full lecture in English, click here.

End of Slavery and Sustainability: published on Grupo Santander’s sustainability portal on the End of Slavery week in Brazil, draws a parallel between how we treated slaves 2 centuries ago and how we see the environment nowadays. The reflection came up while going to the countryside with friends for a trekking and rappelling long weekend. Good stuff!

Education system design issue

2009-07-07T00:21:00.002-03:00

Research says the top quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class by over 10% in one single year. Awesome! What are, then, the characteristics of this top quartile?

Very senior teachers? No. Once somebody has taught for 3 years, their teaching quality does not change thereafter.

Maybe teachers with masters degrees? No. According to research, masters degrees have no effect at all in teaching quality.

You might be thinking: the way the pay system works in most countries rewards these two things: seniority and master degrees. What really matters, though, is not any of those. What makes the difference is past performance. Doesn't that make sense? If someone continuously proves s/he is competent at engaging students to learn, s/he will probably have a good performance engaging more students in the future.

Well, classic example of a unintelligent design, which does not see the whole system, does not reinforce desired behaviours and does not naturally create conditions for improvement, i.e. increasing whole classes' performance by 10% every year.

More on Education? Check the provocative TED talk which inspired this post.

Brilliant people

2009-06-29T00:12:00.001-03:00

Brilliant people break with society’s concepts, not only in their art but with their behaviour. Drugs, unhealthy relationships, self demand, depression, extra concerns with image – all situations and feelings which tend to bring pain to the ones ahead of their time and shock the conservatives.

I would really like to understand the neuroscience behind all that. Do brilliant people create unique synapses? Do they have bigger doses of some kind of hormone? Or are they just more daring than others to expose themselves to new situations and break with current paradigms?

Well, one way or another, people like Michael Jackson do live more intensively, suffer a whole deal greater and leave profound marks in the way everybody else sees the world.

What if we carried our trash?

2009-05-31T21:02:00.005-03:00

Clearly, one of the most important factors contributing for unsustainability is the scale of everything today: energy production, construction, agriculture and disposing.

Maybe, if we reconnect to the consequences of our own decisions, we would act a little differently. To start with, what if we carried our trash for a week?

Yunus' wish list

2009-05-25T22:11:00.002-03:00

Towards the end of his book Creating a World without Poverty, Yunus shares his 2050 wish list. Amongst the items, there are a few which called my attention:

- There will be no poor, no beggars and no homeless

- There will be no passports or visas – everybody will be a world citizen

- There will be no war, no war simulation, no military institutions and no mass destruction weapons

- The economic system will encourage people, enterprises and institutions to share their prosperity

- There will be no discrimination of any kind

- Basic connectivity will be wireless and practically free

- People will enjoy an atmosphere of continuous innovation

- Everybody will be committed to maintaining a sustainable lifestyle

- All peoples will live in peace, harmony and friendship, searching for expansion of humankind’s potential

And he finishes: “If we consider human history, it’s clear that we always accomplish what we want – or what we refuse to accept.”

Cultural Revolutionaries - Independence Declaration

2009-05-23T23:21:00.003-03:00

The more I think about my lifestyle and how life in general should look like, the more I value cooperation, diversity and ecology - and the more I notice other people, movements and organisations searching for the same. In this direction, my great friend Marcelo (Dad of my beautiful god daughter Luna) recently found an insightful declaration available online. Check it out!

This is an open experiment.
A putting in words of what is already in the air.
The more this declaration is being read, thought or spoken out, the more its energy will manifest in our world and in our society.
If what is written here resonates with you, make it your statement.
Find ways to read it, share it and put it into action.

DECLARATION OF CULTURAL REVOLUTIONARIES 2009

Cultural revolutionaries in 2009…

_live, act, work with and not against nature
_know that life is too complex to understand it intellectually
_build and support local, self-governed economies
_value and safe-guard diversity of all kind
_value interdependence, since they know that nothing is separate
_regard themselves as equal to all life forms
_protect and support life
_love and support children unconditionally
_work on themselves towards greater awareness
_know about ecological principles and integrate them into their lifes
_see music and dance as an integral part of their expression and communication
_live on an animate earth and regard it as sacred
_know how to grow their own food
_appreciate their sensory awareness
_celebrate life
_cooperate
_make the shift from thinking ‘either, or’ to thinking ‘as well, as’
_share their knowledge
_understand and integrate process as a way of being
_are not identified with their body, thoughts or emotions
_see the mind as a tool
_realize that there is no right or wrong
_are not identified with any social tag, their past or their future
_are aware that the very essence of who they are is life itself
_take responsibility for their emotions
_are aware of and value their relationships to their living and seemingly non-living surroundings
_value and integrate the wisdom of women
_value and integrate the wisdom of indigenous cultures
_value generalist knowledge
_are aware of change as one of the core principles of evolution
_work towards diversification and decentralization
_engage in and create bonds to the place where they live
_turn from dependent consumers to responsible producers
_are looking for ways so that their interests and talents may unfold
_have the courage to resist and disobey laws that render self-rule, self-provisioning, and self-sustenance illegal
_are informed about the current money system and identify it as a contemporary form of enslavement
_identify and boycott biological, cultural, social and philosophical monocultures
_boycott monopolies of any kind
_question everyone who promotes one solution
_value environmental and human ethics over profit maximization
_reclaim land and forests as common good
_reclaim water as common good
_reclaim biodiversity and knowledge as common good
_are aware that they participate in the process of co-creation at all time
_allow life to unfold through them

Berlin, 03/2009

Source: culturalrevolutionaries.org

1 Million Women fighting climate change

2009-05-20T22:43:00.007-03:00

Created by Climate Coolers, a not-for-profit, non-partisan women's organisation, 1 Million Women is the latest cool engaging marketing campaign from the gum trees' land.

Based on the fact women make over 70% of consumer decisions, the campaign's goal is to inspire 1 million Australian women to take practical action on climate change by cutting 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse pollutant causing global warming.

The videos are very well done. Thanks for the lead, Sveta!

Free market & global issues

2009-05-17T19:11:00.005-03:00

My experience has shown that the free market - powerful and useful as it is - could treat problems such as global poverty and environmental degradation if only it weren't too concerned in accomplishing the financial goals of its richest shareholders.

Extracted from the book Creating a world without poverty, by Mohammad Yunus

Fantastic clay animation

2009-05-11T22:46:00.003-03:00

Adam Elliot's work Mary and Max is amazing: innocent funny script, beautiful execution and very well chosen music. The "claymation" is really worth it!

Check the official website for more.

Effort, bravery and experience

2009-05-10T23:41:00.012-03:00

About 2 months ago, my Dad and I had the wonderful opportunity to reconnect to ourselves and to one another by doing a 3 day long 75km walk.

Scenario: São Miguel das Missões, where Spanish Jesuits built with the indigenous people 30 religious commutes which influenced importantly the culture of Southern Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

Remembering where we came from:
- the gaucho culture is amazingly simple, genuine and hospitable
- the liaison to the land and nature is an essential part of who we are
- redemption and learning come with effort, bravery and experience

At our last night on the road, musician and poet Claudino de Lucca met us and dedicated a very sensitive poem. A part of it says:

The finish line doesn’t matter
Nor does our own salvation
What matters is to water again our predecessors’ land
With tears, sweat and blood

What if I were a fairy...

2009-04-28T23:37:00.001-03:00

In my post grad studies, the other day, the professor proposed an exercise for us to reflect about how the same thing can have a bright and a dark side, depending on what we do with it.

In my turn, I picked a card saying: What if I were a fairy...

Well, at the light, I guess would be Ishmael, the gorilla from Daniel Quinn's famous book. Ishmael communicates telepathically and inspires special people to reflect deeply about the world and themselves, so to sharpen their perception and act the right direction.

If I were a fairy in the shadow, I would be a genius of the lamp, conceiving desires to whoever crosses my way. The people would feel successful and happy and I would have delivered something considered important. However, the realizations would often be superficial and therefore none of us could possibly feel truly fulfilled.

I guess this simple exercise not only served to introduce complex thinking, but to get us reflecting about our characteristics and actions.

Sustainability: simple and fun

2009-04-26T16:18:00.005-03:00

At work, we just produced a simple and fun video about sustainability, which intends to bring essential contents about personal responsibility and world issues to everybody.

It is part of a 3 chapters' online course and stars Roberto, a black Brazilian guy who has a typical big city routine.

To see it, click here and turn on the English subtitles. Please comment with your feedback.

Emotion

2009-04-12T22:34:00.002-03:00

The "astonishing virtuoso and compelling musician" João Carlos Martins keeps on overcoming physical challenges and fulfilling all of us with the purest emotion.

At age of 25, he started to lose the movements of his hands and feel very strong pain. Unbelievably, he found inspiration in the "perhaps most important month in musical history" - the month when Bach was sent to jail - to keep on expressing "something inside one cannot explain" through his music, because "music was his life and that's why he sticks to it".

Quotes from the documentary Martins' Passion